


Don't Let It Fade

by Namarie



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2019-05-09 09:30:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14713518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Namarie/pseuds/Namarie
Summary: Wyatt gets a surprising glimpse at one possible future of his. Hopefully this time, that means he can change it.





	Don't Let It Fade

~~  
Wyatt wasn't the least bit surprised that no one slept that night. Or maybe that was an overstatement: he guessed poor, exhausted Jiya fell asleep in her room – alone, no Rufus beside her – after her first outburst at Connor and the rest of the team. But he was pretty sure no one else did. For himself, he couldn't even try. Couldn't bear to lie down on his bed in the room he'd been sharing with his traitorous, lying wife. (Ex-wife, as soon as the divorce papers he had signed upon first returning to his room after the mission were filed.) Sure, he'd stripped the beds, pushed Jessica's as far away from his as possible, and gathered all her things in a heap on top of it, but that didn't change how polluted it felt in there. He had thought about going to sit in the common area instead of sitting on the floor in that room. But the idea of having to interact with any of his teammates right now was intolerable. Hell, after what he'd done to them all – to _Rufus_ – he wasn't sure how he was going to face them ever again.

So here he sat, on the floor next to his bed, drinking from a flask Jessica had apparently brought with her. That was the one thing of hers he could touch. It had been full; at least she hadn't expected she would get pregnant, was what he read into that. If she even was. She could still be lying. She had lied about everything else since she'd reappeared in his life, after all. But anyway, he didn't know what he was going to do after he finished the flask. He wasn't going to be drunk enough by that point … but getting more alcohol would involve going out into the common area. Which he was too much of a damn coward to do.

He had just swallowed down another mouthful when there was a knock on his door. Wyatt nearly choked at the sound. Who the hell would be coming to talk to him right now at – he checked his watch. Two in the morning? As he struggled to his feet (okay, he was at least a little buzzed), he told himself sternly that it wasn't Lucy. He shouldn't even expect her to want to be near him. Not after everything he'd done to her today and in the past several weeks.

The knocking got louder as he walked toward the door. “I'm coming,” he yelled, aware he sounded both as annoyed and on the edge of a breakdown as he was. “Just give me a second, all right? You don't have to--” When he opened the door, he froze. It was Jiya.

There was a short pause. He was about to apologize for yelling when he looked a little closer. Her eyes were wide, and she was breathing heavily as she stared into his face. “Jiya?” he said. “Are you--” No, of course she wasn't all right. He changed his question. “What's going on?”

“Come on,” she said, grabbing his hand (the one that wasn't holding the flask) and dragging him back into the room, closing the door most of the way behind her. She stopped briefly when she saw the state things were in, but then continued to pull him toward his bed, where she sat down. “I need to show you something.”

Wyatt stared at her. Was he more drunk than he'd thought? What the hell was going on?

He must have asked that question out loud, because Jiya gave him a frustrated glare and said, “Look, I know this is weird. But you need to-- to see this. I've never done this before, but I think I can show you what I just saw.”

It took him far too long to figure that out. “You mean … show me what you saw in a vision?”

“Yes!” She tugged on his arm until he finally sat down.

When she saw him put the flask next to him, he just shrugged and looked away. “Can't sleep.”

“Yeah, I get that,” said Jiya, and he didn't have to imagine what her face looked like right now. He'd seen it enough on the way back from San Francisco. But she took a shuddering breath and said, “Okay. Um, like I said, I've never done this before and I'm not even one hundred percent sure it's possible, but I need to try. I need to show you what I just saw in my vision.”

“Why?” He turned to look at her again.

“Because … because I don't want to lose any more team members – any more friends. Okay?” There were tears in her eyes, but she didn't let them fall.

Wyatt blinked. He still didn't really understand, but he couldn't disagree with that goal. “Uh, okay,” he said. “What do I need to do?”

“Just, um.” A tiny smile appeared on her face, just for a second. “Have you ever seen any _Star Trek_? I think I'll try something like the Vulcan mind meld.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Uh...”

“If it doesn't work, all that's going to happen is that my hands will be on your face for a few seconds.” It was her turn to shrug, and she flushed a little. “Which, granted, will be weird, but it won't hurt either of us.”

“And if it does work?” Wyatt was starting to wish he'd started drinking earlier. This sounded really weird and uncomfortable.

“Then you'll be able to see it. The vision. And I won't have to try to explain it in a way that you'll believe me.” She raised her hands toward him, but stopped when he leaned away. “Please, Wyatt. Just … let me try?”

Swallowing, Wyatt heard the echoes of how she had pleaded with him, with Rufus, with the universe in general while Rufus lay dying outside the saloon. He sighed. “Fine. Should I close my eyes?”

“Sure.”

A second later, he felt Jiya's hands, one on either side of his face. At first, nothing else happened. He kept his eyes closed, though, because that made it a little less awkward (for him, anyway). He heard her sigh in frustration. Then she took a deep breath and let it out. “Okay. Here goes.”

And then suddenly he gasped in surprise, but it was like that was muffled. He wasn't sitting on the bed in his darkened room. He was stalking down the hall of the bunker, eyes straight ahead. There was a hallway past the common area that dead-ended, and that was where the workout area had been set up. Of course, he had to walk past the couches and tables and dining room to get there. But it had been enough days by now since Rufus's death that the others knew not to ask if he had eaten anything, or how he was doing. His answer to both questions was always, “I'm fine.”

And he did eat. He knew he had to, if he wanted to be able to function at all. He ate late at night before he showered, and then lay on his bed without closing his eyes for hours at a time. It was the best way to be sure he avoided the bunker's other residents. He couldn't stand to see how Lucy and Flynn were continuing to gravitate toward each other, or how grief had permanently shadowed Jiya's and Mason's faces – or how Agent Christopher watched him with too insightful of a gaze. He needed to be alone, as far as that was possible here. So he spent his days in his room or exercising, which is where he was headed now.

Then the scene changed. He was buckling himself into the Lifeboat. A stone-faced Jiya was in the pilot's seat, and Flynn was helping Lucy with her seatbelt. There were still bruises on Lucy's face, though they were almost faded by now, and Flynn's arm seemed to be better. None of the Lifeboat's other occupants spoke to him, though Lucy and Flynn kept trading significant looks as Jiya got the ship ready to go. Wyatt felt irritation, regret, and jealousy (God, how did he even think he had the right to be jealous after how badly he'd hurt her?) break through the despair that was weighing him down. “What?” he snapped, after the third or fourth time Lucy had shot him a worried glance.

“Nothing,” she said quickly, looking away again. Toward Flynn again.

“We're just hoping you'll have your head in the game enough to actually contribute to the mission,” said Flynn then. There was much less of the usual sarcasm in his voice. It almost – _almost_ – sounded like he was worried.

“I'll be fine,” said Wyatt. He even tried for a smile, though he was sure it had failed. “Nothing for you to worry about.” He could still do the job. His heart didn't have to be intact for him to be able to do the job. All he needed was to focus on the goal, which was more personal than ever: taking out Rittenhouse.

Things went blurry for a while, and then they were on some street in the past somewhere (if Wyatt had had to guess, he would have said sometime in the fifties, based on fashions and the few cars he could see from his vantage point). And there were people shooting at them, while they all took refuge in an alley. Flynn was slightly further inside the side street. He was shouting something to him, but Wyatt wasn't listening. He was too focused on the glimpse of red hair he had seen behind the pickup truck across the street. Emma.

Emma, who was the only person he blamed more than himself for the string of disasters that had been happening ever since the bomb at Mason Industries. The one who had taken away Lucy's chance of ever seeing her sister again, who had brought Jessica back and helped turn her into a Rittenhouse agent, who had killed Carol Preston, who had beaten up Lucy, who had killed Rufus. She had escaped far too many times. She needed to die. Rage and grief were all but choking him as these thoughts swirled through his head.

He edged further out of the alley, then glanced over at Flynn, Jiya, and Lucy. They were all relatively safe for the moment. Then he met Flynn's eyes. Whatever the other man read in his gaze, it was enough to make him shake his head. The noise of the shootout was too loud for him to hear, but he could see Flynn mouth, “No, Wyatt.” Wyatt turned away.

There was a row of mail deposit boxes on the sidewalk outside the alley. It wasn't much cover, but if he timed it right, he could probably make it. And there was no way Emma would be expecting a risky move like that.

Forcing himself to stay focused on his goal, Wyatt waited until Flynn was laying down what could function as decent cover fire. Then he made a run for it.

Dimly, he heard someone scream his name from inside the alley. He ignored it. And then he was behind the cover of the mailboxes, firing toward Emma and her Rittenhouse goons. He took out two of the men in as many shots. After his next two shots went wide, and he dodged return fire, he felt a thrill of triumph when Emma went down. It hadn't been a kill shot, he was pretty sure, but it wasn't just a graze, either. He might have shattered her shoulder, at very least. And Jessica was nowhere to be seen, which … was probably best, under the circumstances.

The rest of their enemies were on the run now. Wyatt waited for them to all turn tail before he dashed back across the sidewalk to the alley – and then stumbled as one last shot grazed the top of his right shoulder. The pain was intense.

“Wyatt!” It was Lucy, rushing toward him only for Flynn to grab her arm until he was safely back in the cover of the alley. Then she shook Flynn off and closed the gap between them. “Are you all right?”

Wyatt took his left hand away from the wound, looking at it as best he could though the angle was awkward. “It's fine. Just a graze,” he said, through panting breaths. “Let's get out of here, huh?”

“Let me see,” she insisted, stepping closer.

“Lucy,” he said, stepping back and covering it again. He met her wide eyes for a second and then looked away. “I'm fine. Let's just-- let's just go.” Without waiting for her response or anyone else's, he started on the way back to the Lifeboat. Give him a bandage and maybe a few stitches, and he'd be back to normal in a few days.

The scene changed again. This time, he was standing next to Agent Christopher's desk in the bunker, a bandage on his shoulder, trying to maintain his temper while his boss lectured him. Flynn stood next to him, uncharacteristically serious.

“It was a foolish risk to take, Wyatt, and not tactically sound,” she said. “You could have been killed!”

“With all due respect, ma'am, you weren't there,” he said. “You can't make judgments about whether it was tactically sound.”

Flynn cut in. “But I can, since I was there. And I agree with Agent Christopher. Just two inches to the left, and that bullet would have hit you in the neck instead of grazing your shoulder!”

“But it didn't,” he shot back, glaring at the other man. “And I took out a bunch of Rittenhouse soldiers, and gave Emma an injury she won't be able to recover from quickly. Isn't that worth a little risk? And since when do you care about my wellbeing, anyway?”

Flynn sighed. He and Agent Christopher traded a look, and then he said, “Maybe it was worth the risk. But you're supposed to be helping protect Lucy and Jiya while we finish the job of destroying Rittenhouse. You can't do that if you're dead.”

Before Wyatt could give his furious reply to that, Agent Christopher held up a hand. “Wyatt, please. Just – I need to know you're not going to continue to take wildly unnecessary risks from now on.” Her gaze was compassionate now, and somehow that was worse than her disapproval. “I know you're still grieving. We all are. But that's all the more reason to do this right, to make sure Rufus--”

“If you say something about making sure Rufus didn't die in vain...” Wyatt trailed off, aware that his voice had gone from coldly angry to cracking on that last word. He swallowed hard, then made himself reply calmly to Christopher. “I'll be more careful, ma'am. Sorry.”

She didn't look convinced, but she nodded. “Good.”

That wasn't really a dismissal, but Wyatt took it as one. He walked away as quickly as he could without running – but that didn't keep him from being interrupted again before he could get inside his room.

Because Lucy was standing right in front of his door, her arms crossed over her chest. Wyatt sighed, stopping a few feet away from her. “What is it, Lucy?” he asked.

She scoffed. “Like you don't know.”

“No, I don't,” he told her, with a casualness that he tried to make sure didn't sound false. “Why don't you go ahead and tell me, though, since I know you're going to no matter what?”

He saw the hurt flash across her face before she narrowed her eyes at him. “You're being an idiot!” she said. Then she took a deep breath and started again. “You're taking risks you don't need to take. You're acting like-- like you don't care what happens to you.”

He wanted to throw this right back at her, to ask her sarcastically if _she_ cared. But he couldn't do it. Even if he were to try to lie to himself, to make himself believe she didn't worry about his safety, he knew it wouldn't be convincing. Of course she did. This was Lucy. She cared about everyone on their team. No matter how thoroughly he'd broken her heart, and how close she was getting with Flynn. So instead, he said, “I just came from promising Agent Christopher I'd be more careful. Okay?”

Much like his boss, Lucy didn't look very convinced by his promise. But she did look a bit relieved to hear he had made it. “Okay. Good.” She gave him a shadow of her usual smile. “Do that, then.”

He just nodded, staring fixedly at the wall behind her. If he looked into her eyes for too much longer, something inside him that he needed to stay rigid was going to shatter. After a moment, she walked away and left him there.

The scene changed again. This time, they had to be in the 1700s – sometime before electric lights, anyway. The four of them – him, Lucy, Jiya, and Flynn – were all in a dungeon or otherwise trapped underground. It was evening, judging by the fading light coming in through the tiny hole at the top of the wall. Wyatt was hard at work trying to pick the old-fashioned lock on the cell's heavy door.

“I don't mean to rush you,” said Flynn just then, peering out through the slit in the door, “but I think we're about to have some visitors.”

“I'm going as fast as I can,” Wyatt snapped, rolling his eyes. “You just get ready to hold them off when they get here.”

Jiya was pacing behind him. “I never thought I'd say this, but thank God for patriarchal idiots who didn't bother to search 'the womenfolk' when we were thrown in here.” She had a gun in her hands. So did Flynn, and Wyatt knew suddenly that his had come from the pocket hidden inside Lucy's dress.

The lock clicked just then, and the door swung outward. Wyatt spared the time for a brief moment of satisfaction, and then held out his hand to Jiya. “Okay. Not to be patriarchal, but I'll take that for now at least. Let's go!”

She raised an eyebrow but handed it over willingly enough.

As soon as they were out in the dark hallway, there was a shout from the other end, and sounds of people running toward them from some distance. Not far enough, though. Wyatt and the others ran the opposite direction, turning a corner just as the first shots were fired at them. The other three made it just fine … but Wyatt knew the bullet that had hit him this time (he had been the last to get to cover) was not just a graze. The agonizing pain in his upper left side was too severe for that. He staggered and caught himself against the far wall.

“Wyatt!”

“Whoa, whoa, are you okay?”

Both Jiya and Lucy hurried over to him. He didn't push them away, but he did glare at them as he forced himself to put his back against the wall. It hurt like hell, but he needed to be able to face the right direction. “Get out of here,” he shouted, over the sound of their pursuers getting closer. Then he coughed, and felt wetness on his face. Blood.

“Oh, no.” Lucy reached a hand toward his chin. “No. Wyatt...”

He coughed again, expelling more blood even as he felt his left lung continue to fill. “Go,” he choked. He looked up at Flynn. Get them out of here, he tried to say without speaking, holding up his gun meaningfully. I'll hold them off for as long as I can.

Flynn nodded once, his expression grim. “Lucy. Jiya. We need to get out of here.”

“No!” That was Jiya this time. “No, no, no, we can't do this again! _I_ can't do this again! We can't just leave him here! We can't!”

Wyatt could hear her, but he found his eyes focusing on Lucy. His beautiful Lucy, whose face was twisted in absolute grief as she looked down at him. Maybe she didn't still hate him for his failures, after all. He wished he could tell her what he should have told her all those weeks ago, months ago...

His vision was going dark. The pain was unreal. But he saw Flynn all but dragging Jiya and Lucy away, and he was grateful. With his last seconds of awareness, he could try to protect them. He raised his gun.

 

There was a sharp gasp from someone nearby, and suddenly it was like someone had thrown Wyatt back into the present. He jerked backward from-- from Jiya, right, she had been here...

But he'd been shot. Hadn't he? He'd been dying. Wyatt took an experimental breath, and immediately started coughing. The coughing fit continued until he almost felt like throwing up, but it finally passed.

“Are-- are you okay?”

Wyatt looked up from where he had been bent nearly double, hanging over the edge of his bed. After he'd taken a few normal breaths (there was no blood filling his lung, he was fine), he cleared his throat. “I think so.”

“I'm sorry,” she said quietly, twisting her hands together in front of her. “I-- I didn't think about what it would be like to, to start experiencing your own death. That must have been pretty insane.”

He snorted. “What, more insane than you sharing your own vision of my death with me?”

She shook her head with a tiny smile that faded quickly. “I don't know. But...” She trailed off, stared at the floor for a few seconds, and then looked up again. “But I'm glad it worked. Now you know.”

All of his amusement faded, as well. “Know what? That I'm fated to die, just like Rufus?”

“No!” Jiya looked frustrated now. “No, this-- this felt different from my visions about Rufus. I guess maybe that part didn't come across to you as well. This felt like a warning.”

“A warning.” Wyatt gulped.

She pinned him with her gaze. “Yes,” she insisted. “A warning, for you. A warning so that you stop living in your own head and drowning in misplaced guilt. Oh, and so that you don't give up and stop fighting for Lucy because of that guilt I just mentioned. She needs you.”

“No, she doesn't,” he muttered, getting up and walking away. Shame and regret and bitterness were rising in his gut again. He didn't want to hear this.

Jiya stood up, too, and moved so that she was standing right in front of him. “Wyatt. I stopped the vision for you right then, because – well, because I don't know what would've happened to you after you died in it.” She took a breath and went on, “But there was a little more to it. Lucy's reaction, mostly. She--” Her voice caught, and it was still shaky as she tried again. “She took it – _takes_ it really, really hard. It's too much, on top of losing Rufus. You remember how she was right after you guys got her back from Rittenhouse?”

How could he forget? Wyatt nodded dumbly.

“Well, she's way worse after you die,” Jiya went on. She crossed her arms, glaring at him. “And so is everyone else. I mean--” She let out an exasperated sigh, giving him a look like he was the biggest idiot she'd ever seen. “You still have time. For you and her.” Her voice trembled again. “So take it while you can – and don't die on her. Don't be the guy in my vision.”

Wyatt had no idea how to reply to that. But at least Jiya seemed to be done. She touched him on the arm, her expression changing to one of compassion, and then left a few seconds afterward.

He didn't sleep for more than minutes at a time after that. (Of course, lying on a bet with no sheets or pillow probably didn't help. But he still refused absolutely to use the bedding Jessica had touched.) What he had seen, what Jiya had showed him – and what she'd said to him afterward … all of that kept going around and around in his head. He didn't want to be the guy in her vision. He hated the idea that he could give into despair and guilt so completely that he would be right back where he was after Jessica's murder. Worse off, even. At the same time, he knew how easy it would be for him to get there. Hell, he'd already been running full-tilt down that path.

Shuddering, Wyatt got up. It was the crack of dawn now, so he gave up on sleep to shower and shave. When he had changed, he then took a load of sheets to the washing machine. Maybe he could imagine using them again once they were cleaned, at least.

After that, there was no good reason to continue avoiding the common area. Not if he wanted to start down a different road than the one Jiya had showed him last night. So, taking a deep breath, he went down the hall.

No one else was up yet – except Lucy, of course. She was sitting on the floor by one of the vent fans, an ice pack on the worst of the bruises on her face. Wyatt winced. He wondered if the discomfort of her injuries had made it even harder than it would have been for her to sleep last night.

A part of him wanted to turn around and leave again. That part was larger than he'd like to admit. But he wasn't going to do that. He wasn't going to shut himself off from everyone else anymore. Sure, there was a good chance Lucy didn't want to talk to him. Still, he could try.

So he approached her slowly, giving her every opportunity to signal her unwillingness for his company. She didn't. And she didn't flinch away when he sat down next to her on the floor. A tiny bit of the tension that he had been storing up inside himself for who knew how long dissipated at that.

But it wasn't going to be that easy. He had to talk to her. He had to start by confessing what had been eating away at him for weeks, even before Rufus's murder. “This is all my fault,” he began – and from there it was like the dam had broken, and even Lucy's immediate denial of his guilt couldn't stop him. And then she amazed him again: she told him the truth about what he really was to blame for, while still rushing to his defense about Rufus. He didn't deserve her. He never had, and never would.

So he had to tell her. Even though he had no right to expect she would ever make the same declaration back to him now, it was past time for her to know how he really felt. If he doubted that, he just had to think back to Jiya's vision, and how it had felt to know he was dying without having ever told her he loved her.

And another one of the knots that had been weighing him down this whole time loosened as he said the words – even though he couldn't look at Lucy while he said them. At least she knew. Maybe Rufus was up there somewhere, giving him that look like he couldn't believe how clueless Wyatt was, too, but hey, at least he'd gotten there eventually. Before everything fell apart even more than he'd already let it fall.

~

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is what happened when I decided I might try writing an AU where Wyatt *doesn't* eventually figure things out with Lucy - but it was too painful to actually write that, so I had to make it only a dream/vision. Heh. (What - me, unhealthily invested in a fictional couple? No. Never.)
> 
> And yes, I know Jiya's visions have never been shown to work like this. Just roll with it for this story.
> 
> Thanks for reading - and as always, #RenewTimeless.


End file.
